Day 3231 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 8:3 NIV

Beyond the cross what has been will be no more because His will accomplished forever what we could never be before.

And so it all begins anew now, life forever changed so that life may be forever found.

But only for those who first find their flaws as formulated and finalized by the law we've only endlessly shattered inside lives lived without remorse possible only outside of the reverence He deserves. And that's a hard thing, defining the loneliness of the narrow and the scarcity of the souls striding upon it. Because while that thin lane may lead to life, it's lived so abruptly that humility is beyond necessity. It's truly the only way to walk this world from which we're leaving.

And simply put, far too many are still even debating the law itself, seeing themselves not as sinners but as saints who've done no wrongs, and thus warped into wondering why any would abide by this set of expectations that seem to many, most in fact, nothing but a list of hindrances that stifle satisfaction in what a rare few agree to proclaim as unbecoming where we're going.

No, in this world so filled with those so outside their own minds seeking pleasure for self alone, to dare approach any line beyond which everything must change is seen as a most disagreeable invitation.

Why should they? Why should any? Why should we, did we ever agree that sin is not only real but that it's been our only reality? For what gain can come in admitting what the whole world says doesn't need to even be considered? Why would any agree to shouldering a responsibility, let alone one so impossible as righteousness, when we're in this place among this people who live as if nothing matters all that much?

Because, and at least, or perhaps speaking for me personally, there's only so much weakness one can stomach before you begin to wonder what life might be like inside the courage to live a truth I didn't attempt to write, done only by convincing myself that I'd the authority or ability to do so. Because I've done that, we've all done that. We've all well-known that way deemed our own, and yet a funny thing happens when following only our desires:

Life dies. Not in necessarily the type of death we assume death to be confined within, no. It's not a grave or a headstone, not marked by eulogies or bouquets. There's no preacher talking about the peace we'd finally found nor trying to soothe those left to grieve our being physically gone. No, it's other things that are gone that define this death I'm talking about finding, having found it at the end of myself.

It's a loss of things like hope, happiness. Eyes opened after having been closed to spiritual blindness so long that something snaps and we awake to see this emptiness all around us. No joy. No peace. No prosperity. Indeed, the wide road of sin won by our weakness is one in which we wander only away from everything we're trying to find. Chasing replacements and replicas while sacrificing with a smile all that we already had.

All so we could claim we found it again, so that we'd owe none anything at all. We wanted to win, to be the winners, to proclaim ourselves our own saviors, done only by this idea that sells that we've not sinned, but only because we've broken none of our own rules.

As if we can be the ones who write what is right having so fully known all that's wicked and wrong!

No, that's not our place, not our case, not chance at all that He would hear that call of ours denying His and instead expecting Him to compromise. He's not that God, our sinfulness just needs Him to be. And thus the joke is on us, and friends, it's one so far from funny that to laugh is left paling in probability behind crying out in shame.

That's weakness for you, for us, from us.

See, what God designed was defined so as to differentiate who we've become from how we'd begun. From in His image to lost in these wanderings which have left us wondering why we've not found what ourselves said we would. How did we miss it when we're the ones who planned it, picked it? How are we still not satisfied, satiated when we've selected to serve only ourselves and our desires?

Weakness. Not in us. Not of us. Not possible. We cannot create our own life, nor can we create of these lives we were given something that better fits our unwillingness to fit in where He made us to begin with. We can't alter His will, only run from it. And though we're quick, the chains of sin have slowed us to crawl that will either end or begin at the foot of the cross.

See, He came to help us see all we'd lost. He paid our cost so we could understand that cross was never His but always ours. Indeed, He bore our guilt so that we might quit abiding within a weakness that has left us freely giving all we can never gain again. And again, this is something we've all seen, felt, heard, known, been before. Giving away all we are for all we want, wanting always something different, but running low on our stock of what to give.

Because we're living to find the wrong things. We've come to cherish fun and excitement, applause and entertainment. But these things wane, lost forever inside this endless ebb and flow that leaves us eventually nowhere to go but deeper into the darkness we've chosen to assume contains all we need to finally make it toward this freedom from reason and reality and responsibility that will leave our weaknesses finally acceptable.

So that we'll not have to change them, reframe them, refuse them and lose them in exchange for the gain of a strengthened courage to accept that we're not here of our own doing, nor is what we're doing enough to get us where we could be going.

Only Christ can do that.

Not the laws we've already failed to uphold. Not the demand of righteousness we can never be. Not the number of prayers we pray or how polished they sound. God will not be pleased with our sacrificing an hour every Sunday morning nor our ability to pronounce the names strewn throughout Scripture that sound from both another time and another language. No, having been who we've become, there is no pleasing God because all we have to show are the weaknesses we've settled for.

And it's His very law which testifies against our ability to ever be enough. The Commandments convince all that all we are is entirely in the wrong. Break one, break all. But having all broken the first, we are but last in line of this string of beggars bargaining for bread we know we don't deserve to eat because all we've done is sin away all that was already given. Prodigals proving the providence of God's promising provision by providing proof that we've never cared.

But now we can. Now we should. Because it's hard, and well, the only way to address, absolve, resolve to remove our many weaknesses, and their making for wickedness seem wanted, is to embrace the chance to for once do what's hard rather than sticking to the safety of the sufficient. No, we have to fight, to strive, to work, to hurt even if we're to heal.

Yes, nothing gets stronger outside the fire. Which is exactly why Christ came to light up the world, shining for once a light into our darkness as if to say that what has been will be no more. Not on this new side of a cross taken up, because He's now shown what can be done, what should be done, because of what has been done. His taking our cross means we can, should, will too.

Just a matter then of when.

And if not now, then when? Because if what He's done isn't enough now to inspire us now to make changes now, when will we? He isn't coming back to put on another display of our discrepancy! He will not die again my friends. And simply put, to ask Him to or live as if He will is nothing but evidence that our weaknesses have chosen for us once more to miss the message.

But there is not another.

Christ came to this earth, emptied of Himself to the very point of this incredible giving of Himself all so all could see that we need to be emptied too. Because what has filled us is fatal if found before God without He who died to intercede. We can't live without Christ, and so we can't allow our weaknesses such as fear or foolishness to keep us from accepting Him any longer either.

Because we don't have much longer. Might be a matter of days, we don't know. But what we do is that He's coming back, but not to pick up a cross, rather to separate those who've since taken up theirs from those who've sought only excuses to not do so. Many will never do so, and for those many, salvation is thus impossible. Because He can't be the only One who dies if we're to truly live again, let alone forever.

No, if His gift of new life means as much to us as it should as seen in how much it meant to Him, how dare we hold on to anything that keeps us possibly apart from the Savior who came to put us back together? That's not only selfish, it's just stupid. Because honestly, do we really think that He did all that just to leave us so weak that we still wonder and wander and waste away in this place in which we cannot stay? Do we not live like we can only because we’re afraid to do what’s needed should we agree to our impending exit?

Look, He knows who we are. And as terrifying a truth as that so clearly is, that the cross came after our choices which made it necessary only proves that He's not giving up on us due to our failures. No, He can use them, will use them as proof of His victory. His accomplishment upon the cross shines boldest when we're bold enough to admit that it was our place, and that it was only our weaknesses that made it so needed.

Friends, He doesn't hate us because we've fallen short, He hates that we might choose to stay. If He wanted nothing to do with us because of our many failures and flaws, that cross wouldn't have been carried and Christ wouldn't have suffered. But He did, because He loves, because He knows that all we are are sinners separated from Him because of a chosen lack of courage to refuse ourselves this shortsighted and selfish gain we've come to assume is to be found inside satisfaction.

He didn't create us to be satisfied with a temporary life lost in a wicked world. He created us to be warriors who embody a faith so strong that to lower ourselves to the unacceptable standards of a world without standards would be seen as unworthy of our consideration. So we got it wrong, very wrong. We've been worriers instead of warriors, worrying that He will forever despise us for the weaknesses we’ve chosen over the strength we could have had.

But He didn't. Not yet, because there is still time, so long as it's called today, for us to rebuke our pasts, refuses our weaknesses spilling into the present, and redefine our lives by living now for the strength He's shown for us all to see that exists only within humility so bold that to walk by faith becomes the norm it should have been all along.

He knew we'd get this wrong because He saw all our ancestors do the same. But just as He gave them a chance, He gives us the Christ. He is our chance, our change, our choice, But we have to make it, have to make Him our anchor rather than the stupidities that have held us in place in this place that's passing away.

If He wanted to end us, He'd have done so by now as He has more than enough reason already and we only give Him more with each passing day filled with more pathetic mistakes. But He wants us all to come to repentance so that we all might be saved. And He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay a sinner's debt so that we could see both what we owe and what He did to cover it for us.

But He can only pay our debt when we confess that we are in fact the sinners who owe it. That's what He did it for, and we're those who for whom He did it. But that gift is found only when we dare approach the cross knowing it should have been us hanging where He did.

And while our weaknesses and fears don't want to accept that, we have literally no hope left if we don't. Because without Him, all we can ever be is all we've always been. He died for us to be something new, but we have to agree to lose the old before that life can begin.

Make no mistake, our weaknesses will happily keep us dead if we agree to let them. Stop agreeing. That’s it. It’s a simple change of mind that can and will change so many things if we just try. Try. Move. Fight. Grow. Step into the fire and insist upon being stronger because of it. Because we can be, we’ve something inside of us that we’ve never known before. But it is never found when weakness is allowed. So stop allowing it. And yes, we allow it every time we choose it. We allow weakness to continue to define us whenever we decide to live as if our decisions don’t matter.

They do, and He proved that. But whether or not His work on the cross is enough to inspire us to work toward Him is up to us. But do understand that He knows those who are His and those many who aren’t. And we make it easy enough to tell as well. Where there is weakness accepted, adored, the Son is missing. And where the Son is missing, only darkness will be found.

Settle for that if you wish, but I don’t want to be left wishing for another chance when He does indeed we’ve only the one. This one. This life. This day. Do something new, something hard, something rare. Because the gift we’ve been given should see nothing less.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold